Now if this were any other swim school my recommendation would be for yourself or your child to use goggles. This is purely based on the fact that most swim schools have highly chlorinated pools that will burn the eyes if they are open too long. Since however we are primarily saline here, I think it is important for parents to understand why a lot of our swim instructors will ask their students to swim without goggles or at least do jumps into the pool without them.
I know it may sound harsh or possibly a little bit scary, because everyone would love to be able to see clearly 100% of the time. However learning to be in the water without goggles is a skill that could end up saving your life or your child’s life.
Take for example that your child can swim back and forth from wall to wall doing big arms and rolling to their back to breath with goggles. Meaning you feel confident enough in their water safety ability. Then one day while swimming in the pool with their friends your child’s goggles starts to leak. They panic, because they have never really had to swim or find a wall with water in their eyes before. Since they don’t really know where they are going they begin to swim in circles, their body starts to tense up and ultimately they start drinking water. Luckily you notice in time and are able to grab them and pull them to safety or maybe there is a lifeguard on duty and he does the same.
Now think about how different the outcome could have been if your child was comfortable with swimming without goggles. Instead of panicking your child would have probably just taken off their goggles,swam to the nearest wall, put their goggles back on and then continued swimming with their friends.
Here is another situation you might find yourself in. Your child isn’t completely water safe yet but they know enough swimming that they can jump in and swim back to the wall without any trouble. You have seen them working on this with their swim instructor for the last couple weeks (the swim instructor asks them to put their goggles on, jump in and then swim to a wall). Meaning if they fell into the water at a pool party or while they were playing at grandma’s you would feel pretty confident that they would be safe, right?
Your child however is not always going to be prepared to fall into a pool at any given time. Their goggles are not going to be on their heads or around their necks just waiting for some crazy event to occur. Which means if cousin Ned pushed them in from behind as a joke and your child can’t find the wall without goggles, you could be looking at a serious problem.
Maybe your child however swims at Patti’s Swim School and they have been practicing the jump in and return to the wall without their goggles. Which means you can safely say that with or without goggles, it doesn’t matter. Your child will be able to enter and exit the pool safely no matter the circumstances.
Patti's Swim School 